Natural Sciences (Biological) @ Sidney Sussex, Cambridge in 2021

Interview format

Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA), 2x interviews

Interview content

Biological questions, building on each other

Best preparation

Extra reading and practice talking about subject

Test preparation

Past papers, maths help

Final thoughts

Don't be afraid to guess and show your thinking

Remember this advice isn't official. There is no guarantee it will reflect your experience because university applications can change between years. Check the official Cambridge and Oxford websites for more accurate information on this year's application format and the required tests.

Also, someone else's experience may not reflect your own. Most interviews are more like conversations than tests and like, any conversation, they are quite interactive.

Interview Format

Test taken: Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment (NSAA)
Number of interviews: 2
Time between interviews: No time
Length of interviews: 30 mins
Online interview: Yes

What happened in your interview? How did you feel?

Per interview I was asked two biological questions, each lasting 15 mins. They were questions that enabled me to continuously build on my previous answer, assessing my level of comprehension. I was asked to speculate and design further experiments. The atmosphere was not intimidating at all and I settled in quite quickly.

How did you prepare for your interviews?

Just read some extra reading that I was passionate about and practiced explaining concepts to people who were not familiar with them

If you took a test, how did you prepare?

Past papers and help from friends who studied Maths A Level

What advice would you give to future applicants?

Don’t be afraid to guess in interviews and show that you’re thinking about it in the moment, not just remembering learnt information: they’re assessing your ability to be taught, not what you already know.